Not Who You Are, Not Where You Are, But Where You THINK You Are . . .

Another important study from the always-interesting Nancy Adler, who studies how people's health is affected by their perceptions of their place in society. Adler's work suggests two important points about the mind-body connection:

1. Individual experience matters. Two people who are ``objectively'' in the same income and education categories may have different notions of their status, and that difference predicts how they'll score on measures of health and longevity.

2. Status matters. We don't know if it's the perception of inequality, as Richard Wilkinson suggests, or if it's that low-status associates with lack of control over one's life, as Sir Michael Marmot says. But status -- not income, not access to medical care, not nutrition, just status itself -- has an effect on how long people live, and how well.